A Mind That Races Ahead of Its Feelings
A French study of 328 children put a familiar parental observation, asynchronous development, to the test.
Insights
What the research says, read closely.
Families are handed a great deal of research, most of it reported with more confidence than it earns. Each essay here takes a single study on how minds learn: attention, giftedness, learning differences, then sets out what it establishes, and where an honest reading stops.
Browse the essays
Arranged by subject.
Choose a topic. Each essay follows a single study: what it measured, what it found, and the point at which the evidence runs out.
For Gifted Students, Knowing How to Learn Mattered
Following 341 German adolescents, managing one's own learning predicted achievement beyond intelligence itself.
The Lockdown That Narrowed a Gap
The COVID closures hurt all primary children, but hit non-gifted children harder, and by a different route.
Not All Underachievers Are Alike
A Belgian study of 403 able adolescents found several distinct kinds of underachiever, not one.
What Set Gifted Underachievers Apart
A Spanish study of 164 gifted students, and a set of differences that had nothing to do with ability.
Perfectionism and Anxiety: A More Tangled Knot
A French study of 132 children found the two traits appeared apart, and shifted between school years.
When a Gifted Teenager Tries Alcohol
Gifted seventh graders tried alcohol at the same rate as peers, but the same act carried a different meaning.
An Enrichment Program That Sharpened One Skill Only
A German program lifted gifted children's structured reasoning, but left creativity untouched.
Thirty-Five Years On, Acceleration Did Not Harm Them
Three cohorts of gifted children, tracked for over 35 years, and a common worry that the evidence does not support.
Gifted Teenagers Were No Less Satisfied With Life
A German study of 655 students, a clear test of a familiar stereotype, and the gap that was not there.
Skipping Grades Left Their Social Selves Intact
A Dutch comparison of accelerated and non-accelerated gifted students, and the small differences that favoured moving ahead.
A Small Case Series, and the Limits of What It Can Claim
Three adolescent boys, one psychiatric department in Kolkata, and a hypothesis nobody has yet tested.
How Praise Reshaped a Fear Response in the Lab
A deception in a German laboratory, a fear that faded early, and a question the experiment never asked.
Why a Child With ADHD Performs Unevenly: A Few Slow Trials
What the millisecond record of a dull computer task shows about a child’s uneven performance.
Later School Start Times Add Sleep, but Rarely Raise Grades
Delaying the school day wakes adolescents later; whether it lifts their marks is a far weaker claim.
Where Maths Difficulty Really Lives: The Role of Attention
Forty-six studies, 8,506 children, and a question about where a maths difficulty actually lives.
In Children With ADHD, Anxiety Usually Has a Specific Cause
In a clinic sample of 170 newly diagnosed children, the fear that turned up was mostly attached to something definite, and it left no mark on their…
Autistic Children Imagine Movement More Slowly, Not Less Well
A review of sixteen small studies finds the strategy intact and the speed reduced.
Why Autistic Children Avoid Eye Contact: Two Competing Accounts
Eleven brain-imaging studies, weighed against two accounts of why autistic children look away.
How Non-Drug ADHD Treatments Fare Under Blinded Trials
Eighty authors, 208 conclusions, and what becomes of the non-drug ADHD treatments once the trials are properly controlled.
Autistic and Depressed Adults Report a Similar Sense of Control
Autistic adults and depressed adults answered a five-item scale about control the same way.
In Gut-Autism Data, Constipation Explained More Than Diagnosis
Thirteen datasets, 690 children, and a diagnosis that ranked below constipation as a source of variation.
Children With ADHD Rate Only School Lower Among Their Strengths
Fifty-six children scored their own strengths, and four of the five domains showed no group difference.
Why Children With ADHD Prefer Smaller, Sooner Rewards
Two readings of the same choice, and a task built to distinguish them.
Does Everyday Worry Impair Memory? Barely, a Large Study Finds
Five hundred and three adults, ten memory tests, and a result that stopped just short of significance.
Exceptional Skills in Autism Are Common but Poorly Measured
Forty studies agree that autistic people often have remarkable abilities, and agree on almost nothing else about them.
Social Understanding and Self-Control: A Link Left Untested
Sixty children in Chandigarh were measured on social understanding and on self-control, and the design could not say how the two related.
Fewer Than Half of Children With ADHD Symptoms Get Help
A federal survey counted the children, then counted the conversations.
Motor Tests Used in Autism Research Were Not Built for It
Twenty-two studies of motor skill in autistic children, and not one of the tests they used was designed for autistic children.
How Girls Present With Autism Differently, and What’s Untested
A review of 329 papers on where the autism sex ratio came from, and how much of the female presentation has actually been tested.
What Autism Heritability Estimates Do and Don’t Tell a Family
The autism twin studies estimate variation across a group, and assign nothing to any single family.
Helping Children Remember Intentions: The Role of the Cue
The name for remembering to do something later, and what forty-seven children did with it at a screen.
Attention Drifts Most During Long Waits: Evidence From ADHD
A study that interrupted adults thirty times a task to ask them a single question.
Mind Wandering Predicts ADHD Impairment Beyond Symptom Counts
What a fifteen-item questionnaire asks adults with ADHD, and what it added to the scales already in the clinic.
Motivation in ADHD Has Been Studied Only Through Reward
A theoretical paper on what four decades of ADHD reward experiments left unexamined.
Anxiety and Self-Control in Children Reinforce Each Other
Worry predicts later declines in a child’s self-control, and self-control predicts later worry.
Executive Function Does Not Separate Autism From ADHD
Fifty-eight studies tested autistic children and children with ADHD on the same tasks, by the same testers, and the profiles did not separate.
Why Autism Epigenetics Is Not Yet a Clinical Test
Eighteen studies of DNA methylation in young autistic children, and the distance between them and a test.
Sleep and Reading Social Cues: A Link Never Tested in Children
Two McGill researchers make the case that sleep bears on how a child reads other people, and report that the question has never been tested.
In ADHD, Attention Difficulty Concentrates at Noticing
Across fifty-one studies of ADHD, the difficulty concentrated at the point of noticing.
A Large School Counselling Programme Tested Without a Control
Sixteen sessions, 270 counsellors, 7,129 adolescents, and no comparison group.
Environmental Factors in Autism, Ranked by Evidence Quality
About a hundred environmental factors in autism, ranked by the quality of the evidence behind each.
One in Four Anxiety Patients Also Had ADHD, a Clinic Found
What one Canadian clinic found when it asked every patient about attention.
What Eye-Tracking Studies of Autistic Preschoolers Actually Measure
Twenty-nine eye-tracking studies of autistic preschoolers, pooled and then divided by what was on the screen.
Exam-Anxiety Training Improved Self-Reports, Not Grades
The trained students reported less exam anxiety; the registrar’s grades did not move.
Home and School Disagree Most on Gifted Children With ADHD
In gifted children with ADHD, home and school ratings of inattention were nearly nine points apart on the same questionnaire.
Movement Difficulties in ADHD Affect Participation Most
Three quarters of a Spanish ADHD sample screened positive for a movement disorder, and the widest gap was in what the children actually did.
What a Planning Task Actually Measures in Children
What the largest single result in a study of 146 children actually recorded.
In ADHD, Language Falters Most in Pragmatics
Fifteen studies, nine countries, and the same domain failing in each of them.
Repetitive Behaviour in Young Children Has Four Distinct Types
A review of 41 studies of children under four, and what the diagnostic manual added to the list in 2013.
Two Kinds of Mental Flexibility Use Different Brain Circuits
What the neuroscience of flexibility separates, and what it still cannot say about one child.
Self-Monitoring Helps in Class While It Is in Use
A four-pupil classroom experiment, and the difference between that and a trial.
Sensory Seeking Predicts Self-Control Only in ADHD
A model that accounted for 43 percent of the variance in one group of children returned nothing in another.
The Limits of Diffusion Brain Imaging in Autism Research
A meta-analysis of 33 diffusion imaging studies in autism, and the limits built into the measurement itself.
Does Filtered-Music Therapy Work? The Evidence Is Too Thin
Ten hours of filtered music through headphones, and what a systematic review found when it went looking for evidence.
Sleep Disorders Overlap With ADHD but Are Rarely Measured
Five sleep disorders occur more often alongside ADHD, and each can produce the daytime symptoms the diagnosis is built on.
Strength-Based Learning: A Popular Term, Rarely Defined
The terms a school will use, and how much evidence stands behind each.
Movement Synchrony in Autism Belongs to Both Partners
Sixteen studies measured how movement aligns between partners, and the alignment belongs to both.
Social-Skills Training for ADHD: Weak Evidence at School
Twenty-five randomised trials of social skills training for ADHD, and a certainty grade of very low.
Worry, Not Bodily Tension, Enlarges the Brain’s Error Signal
Worry enlarges a brain response that bodily tension leaves alone.
ADHD Diagnosis Disparities Persist After Adjusting for Everything
Income, insurance, classroom behaviour and test scores were all accounted for, and every disparity remained.
How Far Autism Genetics Is From Anything a School Can Use
Where the genetics of autism has arrived, and how far that is from anything a school can use.
Testing the Claim That ADHD Confers a Creativity Advantage
Thirty-three children with ADHD, thirty-three without, and half an hour of drawing.
In Generalised Anxiety, the Difference Appears in Milliseconds
Fifteen adults with generalized anxiety disorder scored like everyone else, and the difference appeared 270 milliseconds in.
Why Adults With ADHD Weigh Risky Rewards Differently
Offered a gamble worth more than the certain points beside it, adults with ADHD took it less often than their peers.
Reading Movement in Autism Gets Harder as Inference Grows
Thirty studies of point-light walkers, sorted by what each task asked the viewer to do with them.
A Brain-Wave Test for ADHD, Cleared but Not Endorsed
A brain-wave test for ADHD was cleared by American regulators in 2013, and American neurologists reached a different conclusion three years later.
Motion Perception in Autism: A Difference Too Small to Rely On
Forty-eight studies of motion perception in autism, pooled into a small group difference that no moderator explained.
Looking Inside the Gifted Population Instead of Comparing It
A Quebec study looked inside the gifted population instead of comparing it with everyone else.
What Sensory Integration Therapy Studies Actually Measured
Twenty-four Korean studies of sensory integration therapy, and what each of them measured
Where the Genetic Overlap of Autism and Schizophrenia Stops
Twin research on schizophrenia and autism, and the point at which it stops.
The ADHD Brain Reaches a Developmental Peak Three Years Later
A study of 824 brain scans timed one developmental landmark in 446 children.
A Predicted Brain-Connectivity Pattern in Autism Did Not Hold
Eleven pediatric imaging datasets were pooled, and the local finding ran the other way.
How ADHD Presents Across a Woman’s Life, and Where Evidence Thins
A review of ADHD across a female lifespan, and where its evidence thins
What a Mouse Model Can and Cannot Tell Us About Autism
What a laboratory rodent can stand in for, and where the standing in stops.
A Review to Settle Which Maths Interventions Help Was Never Finished
A team specified exactly how to settle which maths interventions help, and the work stopped there.
Why the Right Amount of Help Keeps Changing: Cognitive Load
Cognitive load theory explains why a worked example stops working.
ADHD Rarely Comes Alone, and Why That Guides Treatment
What a review of ADHD comorbidity says about which children respond to which treatment.
How Students With ADHD Manage Time, in Their Own Words
Fifty-two American college students with learning disabilities and ADHD described, in their own words, what they do about time.
A Language Test’s Norms, and the Children It Was Built For
What a metalinguistic battery asks of a child, and which children it was standardised on.
Why an Attention Test Is Harder With Tones Than Letters
Children missed almost five times as many targets when the signal was a pure tone instead of a letter on a screen.
The Face-Inversion Effect in Autism Is Half as Large
Thirty-eight studies turned photographs of faces upside down and measured what the rotation cost.
Time Perception in ADHD Is Really Several Different Skills
The phrase covers at least four separate tasks, and a Prague review wants the diagnostic manual to name them.
Exercise Helps ADHD on a Narrow Outcome and a Short Clock
The evidence for exercise in ADHD is strongest on a narrow outcome and a short clock.
What Makes Social Situations Frightening in Autism
A review of ten studies on what makes social situations frightening for autistic people.
Dyscalculia’s Rival Definitions, and What Each Tells a School
The criteria for dyscalculia disagree with one another, and the disagreement decides what a school learns about a child.
Before Diagnosis, Women With ADHD Often Blamed Themselves
What eight studies of women diagnosed in adulthood say about the years before anyone named it.
ADHD Overdiagnosis or Better Recognition? Reading the Same Numbers
The overdiagnosis charge and the recognition argument, with the evidence each side takes from the same twenty years of numbers.
Why Emotion Regulation Travels With ADHD Remains Unsettled
Three defensible explanations, and a review that declines to choose between them.
How Often, and How Late, Writing Difficulty Accompanies ADHD
A Minnesota birth cohort measured how often, and how late.
A Four-Month Gain, But No Control Group
A large Kazakh study taught 1,200 gifted children through projects, presentations and electives, then measured their scores rise. Without a…
A Good First Impression Came Before a Later Diagnosis
A small study found that autistic adults who made better first impressions on strangers tended to be diagnosed later in life. The link was strongest…
A Head Start in Attention, A Head Start in Maths
A study of over 12,000 American children found that self-control at school entry predicted where maths began, and how fast it grew, but it did not…
A Naming Test Told Them Apart
In 60 Brazilian children, how quickly a child could name a page of letters separated dyslexic readers from typical ones with 88 per cent accuracy. A…
A Review, Not a Verdict, on Gifted Children’s Emotional Lives
A 2021 narrative review gathered sixteen studies on how parenting shapes the social and emotional lives of gifted children. It found consistent…
Anxiety Sat at the Centre of the Sleep Map
A network analysis of 240 autistic children with persistent sleep problems found anxiety and depression, not the sleep symptoms themselves, holding…
Anxiety Sat in the Middle
A study of 471 women found that autistic women camouflage more, feel more anxious, and think about suicide more often. Anxiety helped explain part of…
Bilingualism Did Not Deepen the Dyslexia
A study of 148 Italian ten-year-olds asked whether growing up with two languages adds to the phonological difficulties of dyslexia. It did not. The…
Both Training Programmes Worked Equally Well
A pilot trial gave children with ADHD one of two computer-based cognitive training programmes. Both groups improved. Neither beat the other. Without…
Confinement Brought Children Closer to Their Parents
A large Greek study compared gifted and non-gifted children before and after COVID-19. Both groups came out more motivated and more emotionally…
Dyslexia Was Not Only About Reading
A Brazilian case-control study found children with developmental dyslexia carried markedly more anxiety, depression and behaviour problems than their…
Eleven Students, One Kind of Relief
A Norwegian interview study asked eleven accelerated maths students what the experience was actually like. Their answer was quietly consistent:…
Executive Function Becomes Itself at Two
A fifteen-year study followed 410 children from five months to nine years. The skill we call self-control only starts to hold its shape around the…
Executive Function Tracks With Achievement, But Not By How Much
A meta-analysis of nearly 8,000 primary-school children finds a moderate, consistent link between executive function and academic performance. It…
Exercise Moved Two Measures, Not Three
A 2025 meta-analysis of 16 trials found that exercise reliably improved inhibitory control and working memory in children with ADHD. The third…
Forty Children, No Control Group
A small Spanish pilot study compared working memory and reading comprehension in children with dyslexia and dyscalculia. The differences it found are…
Forty Gifted Children in a Disability Queue
A clinic in Rome looked back at 456 children sent for suspected ADHD or learning disorders. Forty of them were gifted. What happened next says a good…
General Ability Does the Heavy Lifting
A meta-analysis of 305 studies and more than 64,000 children finds executive function reliably tracks academic achievement in primary school. The…
Giftedness Is Not a Thing Inside the Child
A conceptual essay by Robert Sternberg argues that the social and emotional life of a gifted child cannot be separated from the giftedness itself. It…
Girls Are Already Pretending by Twelve
A study of 106 girls aged 11 to 14 found that neurodivergent girls feel they are acting to fit in more than their peers, and that this masking tracks…
Grammar Reaches Into Reading
In a shallow orthography where sounds map cleanly to letters, Italian children’s grasp of grammar still predicted how accurately they read…
Heritable Is Not the Same as Fixed
A review of two decades of dyslexia genetics finds reading difficulty is roughly 70% heritable. It also explains why that number tells you far less…
IQ Was the Weakest Predictor of Daily Life
A scoping review of twelve studies asked what forecasts a child’s day-to-day functioning in autism. The answer was rarely intelligence alone.…
Irony Runs Through a Second Mind
A small 2024 study finds that autistic children’s difficulty with irony tracks one specific skill: reasoning about what one person thinks…
Memory Was the Weakest Link, Not Attention
A study of 249 second-graders found that children with dyslexia lagged furthest behind on two specific memory systems, even after accounting for IQ…
Most Trainings Helped, But the Gains Stayed Put
A review of nineteen studies found that cognitive training often improved executive function in autistic children. Whether those gains reached…
Nineteen Studies, Six Dimensions, One Uneven Profile
A 2025 systematic review gathered nineteen empirical studies on twice-exceptional students and found a consistent signature: sharp internal contrasts…
Ninety-Eight Studies, No Single Number
A 2023 scoping review maps what we know about mental health in childhood dyslexia. It confirms a raised risk, and is honest about how much we still…
One Cluster Held Three Children
A study of 101 Greek schoolchildren sorted dyslexia into three profiles. The sizes of those groups tell you as much as the labels do.
One Hundred and Four Studies, One Uneven Picture
A 2024 systematic review pooled 104 studies of nearly 78,000 children to ask how giftedness is identified and what sets gifted children apart. The…
One in Four Diagnosed Children Had Both
A Pakistani screening study of 1,260 school-age children found that dyslexia and ADHD travelled together far more often than chance would predict.…
One Number Could Not Hold Them
In a study of 390 gifted and twice-exceptional children, the WISC-V Full Scale IQ was statistically uninterpretable for nearly three-quarters of…
One Rhythm Task Did Not Care Which Language You Spoke
A study of 72 Italian-speaking children asked whether we can spot dyslexia risk in bilingual pupils without penalising them for still learning the…
One Test Is Never Enough
A 2025 review of 17 studies asks how we actually find gifted children. The clearest finding is a caution: no single instrument does the job well, and…
Only Inhibition Ran in Both Directions
A two-wave study of 376 preschoolers found that early self-control problems and early attention problems each predicted the other eight months later.…
Passing the Test Is Not the Same as Using the Skill
A 2020 study sorted autistic children by their theory-of-mind ability and found two profiles. The children who did well on the formal tests still…
Play, Then a Small Push Forward
A pilot trial of active group play in preschoolers found modest gains across all three parts of executive function. The signal is genuine but small,…
Reading Minds Came First, Then the Conversations
A two-year study of 106 autistic children found that an earlier grasp of other people’s mental states predicted later social behaviour. It is a…
Resilience Sat Opposite Anxiety, But Nobody Watched It Move
A study of 199 gifted Turkish children during the pandemic found resilience and anxiety strongly linked. It measured them at a single moment, so it…
Self-Kindness Sits Between Self-Esteem and Anxiety
A study of 100 dyslexic adults found high anxiety and low self-esteem. Self-compassion helped explain the link between them. What that does, and does…
Seven Small Studies, One Honest Signal
A scoping review finds that autistic children can be taught to understand metaphor, idiom and irony. What they learn, and how far it travels, depends…
Shame and Pride Sat in the Same Child
A small Australian study listened to seventeen children with dyslexia and their mothers. The children were proud of being different and ashamed of…
Slow Reading Was the Constant
A large meta-analysis finds that reading speed separates dyslexic from typical readers in every language studied, while the size of accuracy problems…
Spelling Trouble Reaches the Writing Hand
A small Spanish study tracked the pen between letters. In children with dyslexia, the hard-to-spell words slowed the pauses you cannot see on the…
Stopping and Switching Track Different Repetitions
A 2015 study of 64 autistic children and young adults found that two distinct laboratory skills — the ability to stop a response and the…
Teachers Saw the Difficulty, Not the Gift
A small study of Saudi elementary teachers found they could describe a twice-exceptional child’s strengths and struggles in detail, yet treated…
The Anxiety Arrives in Secondary School
A study of Italian schoolchildren found that dyslexic pupils showed no more anxiety than their peers in primary school, but by secondary school…
The Beliefs Were Already Right
Fifty-three Grade 3 teachers already held accurate, positive views of twice-exceptional children before any training. A two-day course did not…
The Bottleneck Is in the Hand, Not the Head
A close look at fifty-two upper-elementary and middle-school writers finds that children with dyslexia and dysgraphia produced far fewer words and…
The Brain Changes, But Not in One Place
A large review of reading-intervention studies finds that children’s brains do change after good teaching. It also finds that no two studies…
The Brain Got Quieter, Not Busier
A small randomised trial trained preschoolers in mindfulness for eight weeks. Their working memory improved, and their prefrontal cortex appears to…
The Bridge Between Brain and Behaviour
A study of 203 boys asks how atypical brain wiring becomes repetitive behaviour in autism. The answer, it suggests, runs through executive function.
The Camouflage You Cannot Self-Report
Autistic young women say they mask more than men, and on one questionnaire the numbers agree. But a second, sneakier measure tells a different story…
The Comorbidity Changes With Age
In 472 Italian children with high-functioning autism, roughly one in three had a second psychiatric diagnosis. Which one depended heavily on how old…
The Deficit Is Broad, Not Sharp
A meta-analysis of 235 studies finds a moderate, general weakness in executive function across autism, steady from childhood into adulthood, and too…
The Deficits Look the Same on Paper
A meta-analysis of 58 direct-comparison studies found no measurable executive-function differences between autism and ADHD. Both groups trailed their…
The Dyslexic Students Scored Higher for Anxiety
A study of 205 Moroccan schoolchildren found markedly worse anxiety, depression and self-esteem among dyslexic readers. It measures association, not…
The Effect Did Not Survive Blinding
A 2022 meta-analysis of 17 trials found that cognitive training seemed to help children with ADHD when parents rated the outcome, and did not when a…
The Effect Grows With Frequency
A 2024 meta-analysis of 23 trials finds that physical activity which also makes children think improves executive function modestly overall, and…
The Field Moved From Deficits to Skills
A map of two decades of autism research on pragmatic language shows where attention has gathered, and a quiet shift from what autistic children lack…
The Gains Held After the Magnifier Was Taken Away
A small Malaysian study gave dyslexic children a hand-held reading magnifier for a few months, then removed it. The reading improvements did not…
The Gift Was Hiding the Difficulty
A close reading of a two-child case report from Malaysia, where high IQ scores sat alongside autism, ADHD, and years of missed support. What two…
The Gifted Profile Bends Twice as Far
A study of 948 children with ADHD found that the gifted ones showed the same cognitive imbalance as everyone else in the sample, only roughly twice…
The Girls Looked Like They Were Coping
A small study found that autistic girls took turns as smoothly as their neurotypical peers, while autistic boys did not. The girls were not less…
The Harder Task Was Making Metaphors, Not Reading Them
A small Greek study of verbally able autistic children found they trailed their peers in understanding metaphors, and trailed further still in…
The IQ Gap Closed After Correction
A matched study of 86 children compared autistic and non-autistic cognitive profiles on a single test battery. The largest differences were in…
The Link Ran Through the School, Not the Child
A study of 283 primary-school children found that dyslexia’s association with anxiety, depression and conduct problems worked indirectly,…
The Made-Up Words That Told Them Apart
A repeat-the-nonsense-word task separated bilingual children with a language disorder from those simply learning two languages at once. The words…
The Mask Comes Off at Home
A close interview study of eight autistic girls found that the effort of hiding autism at school often failed on its own terms, and the exhaustion it…
The Masking Was Measured as a Gap
A study of 733 autistic children and teenagers found that the more a child’s autism was hidden during a clinical assessment, the more anxiety…
The Memory Gap Closes at Reading Level
A small, carefully matched Italian study asked whether the memory problems seen in dyslexia are a cause of the reading difficulty or a consequence of…
The Networks Grew, But Only in One Group
A two-year brain-imaging study followed 32 children through the same working-memory task twice. In typically developing children, one kind of brain…
The Paradox Was Never Simple
A French study of 132 children asked whether gifted children are more anxious because they are more perfectionist. The answer was more careful than…
The Preschool Years Show the Same Weak Spot
A large Spanish study of preschoolers compared everyday executive-function ratings across several neurodevelopmental diagnoses. Working memory and…
The Primary Outcome Did Not Move
A small summer trial asked whether parents could deliver a reading intervention to children with dyslexia. On the measure that mattered most, nothing…
The Rating Scale and the Lab Disagreed
A study of 149 Gulf-region children found broad executive-function difficulties in autism on parent-rated measures, yet the child’s planning…
The Reading Difficulty Rarely Travels Alone
A 2018 review finds that 20 to 40 per cent of children with a reading disorder also have ADHD, and that anxiety and depression appear at markedly…
The Reasoning Was Intact; the Bookkeeping Was Not
A study of Italian university students with dyslexia found that verbal and perceptual reasoning held steady, while working memory and processing…
The Same Skill Shows Up Differently in Conversation
A study of fifty conversations found that autistic children broke conversational norms more often than their peers, yet spoke about other…
The Sleep Trouble Was in the Questionnaires
A 2022 study found children with sensory sensitivities had markedly more bedtime resistance, sleep anxiety, and delayed sleep onset than peers. It…
The Test That Does Not Ask a Child to Read
A small Italian study asked whether a naming-speed task could tell dyslexia apart from the ordinary struggles of a child still learning the language.…
The Tests Cannot Tell Them Apart
A 2024 review in Nature Reviews Psychology finds that executive function looks broadly similar in ADHD and autism, and that our standard tests are…
The Thinking Was Built Into the Exercise
A ten-week trial found that physical activity designed to make children think, not just move, sharpened working memory and impulse control in eight-…
The Tools Were Built for Boys
A 2024 narrative review argues that autism assessments miss many girls and women. It is a careful argument about how to diagnose better. It is not…
The Training Improved the Scores, But There Was No Control Group
A five-week working-memory programme lowered attention-deficit scores and softened catastrophic thinking in 120 girls with ADHD. But the study had no…
The Working Memory Gap Was Real, but the Cause Stayed Open
A 2022 study of 74 Cantonese-speaking children found clear working memory differences between dyslexic and control readers. It could tell the groups…
The Working Memory Told Them Apart
A study of 150 Greek schoolchildren found that gifted students with dyslexia reason like their gifted peers, decode like their dyslexic peers, and…
Theory of Mind Carried the Difference
A study of 143 children asked what sits beneath the pragmatic language difficulties in autism. When theory of mind and executive function were both…
There Is Only One Ruler for This Trait
A 2023 review of how researchers measure social camouflaging in autism finds a single validated questionnaire, a consistent link to anxiety and…
They Learned the New Rule, Then Drifted Back
A 2015 study found that people with autism could switch to a new rule as readily as anyone. The difficulty was holding on to it.
Thirty Children, Two Languages Each
A small Italian study built a web tool to screen bilingual children for dyslexia risk in both their languages. It showed the idea can work. It did…
Three Adolescents, Fifteen Weeks
A carefully run training programme improved theory of mind and social skills in three autistic teenagers. What that can and cannot tell us.
Three Groups, Three Trajectories
A twelve-year study tracked executive function in children at high and low likelihood of autism. The autistic children did not start behind and fall…
Training One Skill Moved a Neighbouring One
A randomised trial of 54 children with ADHD found that inhibitory-control training improved an untrained skill—set shifting—while…
Two Kinds of Repetition, Two Kinds of Control
In 102 autistic children, the mental skills tied to rituals and intense interests were not the same skills tied to repetitive movements. The link was…
Two Kinds of Thinking, Trained Together
A 2022 perspective paper argues that autism cognition should be remediated as a whole — social and non-social skills at once — but the…
Two of Three Doors Opened
A meta-analysis of 37 trials finds that active video games sharpen a child’s self-control and mental flexibility. Working memory did not move.
Working Memory Comes First
A carefully designed experiment shows that overloading a child’s working memory reliably damages their self-control, but not the other way…
No essays on that subject yet. Should a question be on your mind, we would welcome the chance to hear from you.